


Casablanca

by dilangley



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, the parents as teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 13:28:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13482453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilangley/pseuds/dilangley
Summary: FP knew trouble when he saw it.Trouble shimmied her hips to the guitar pouring out of Mr. Martin’s cassette player during gym class. Trouble joined the Southside Serpents as soon as she got her driver’s license.Trouble rendered him helpless every time she wore fishnet stockings under her skirt.Alice and FP navigate their high school years, together and apart.





	Casablanca

FP knew trouble when he saw it.

Trouble shimmied her hips to the guitar pouring out of Mr. Martin’s cassette player during gym class. Trouble never locked her locker and labeled it her own with Post-It note reminders on the outside where anyone could read them: _Read Chapter 6 by Thursday. Science Test on Monday. Find a date for homecoming._ Trouble joined the Southside Serpents as soon as she got her driver’s license.

Trouble rendered him helpless every time she wore fishnet stockings under her skirt.

“The drive-in at 8.” He had turned the question into a statement, deliberately flat-lining his tone.

Alice had only smiled, lips curving from the inside out, and gotten on the back of someone else’s motorcycle.

Yet even so, FP had known she would be there.

Alice showed up carrying her own lawn chair five minutes after the movie projector started showing gray static. She unfolded her chair beside his, and FP wondered what they looked like from the projection booth, two teenagers on an empty dirt lot waiting for a movie they hadn’t paid for and didn’t know the name of. The old man who ran Twilight Drive-In these days still fired up the projector on weekends even though the shiny new Cineplex on the Northside drew all the crowds. Everyone wanted cushy reclining seats and freshly popped popcorn.

Everyone except FP Jones and Alice Johnson.

“You worried I wouldn’t come.” She stared straight ahead at the crackling screen, and he let himself run his eyes over her, checked her for the cracks only he could see.

“I didn’t.”

“You should have. I get asked out every weekend, Jones. Every night of every weekend.”

“Yeah.” In his mind, he saw the hooded eyes of those boys who asked, the ones who smelled sex on exposed legs and low-cut shirts, the ones not smart enough to smell the gasoline in her perfume or see the matches tucked in her cleavage. Those boys did not want her. They wanted a fictional woman who wore her skin.

Across the movie screen, _Casablanca_ ’s opening credits flashed. It was the same movie as last week, the same as a month ago. They had seen it at least six times.

“ _Casablanca_ again.” She echoed his thoughts. “I was hoping for a happy ending.”

“Just shut up and enjoy one of the greatest films in the history of history.”

“Shut up? Hell, I could perform it myself.”

She called her own bluff, though, sinking back and taking in the movie. FP tried to watch it intently. He had favorite parts, favorite lines, an intense admiration for Ingrid Bergman’s beautiful face. But his eyes kept drifting over to Alice only to find that hers drifted over to him. And as Rick and Ilsa’s story played out across the screen, he watched the only pageant he liked more: Alice’s persona smoothing and softening from Southside Serpent to sixteen-year-old girl with stars in her eyes.

She reached out to hold his hand when Isla asked Sam to play “As Time Goes By.”

 

\-----------------

 

FP wondered why Alice never asked him to come with her to the homecoming dance. The Post-It note disappeared from her locker three days before the dance, but she never came to him. She came to him other times: across the parking lot, lips curved in a sneaky, snarky grin; under the bleachers on a rare warm October night, shoulders bared in fuzzy sweater; and through his bedroom window, skin pimpled with gooseflesh. She crawled into bed with him, shivering in thin pajamas.

He slipped his arms around her before he was even awake, before he could even make a conscious effort to do so. She snuggled closer as he moved slowly from the warmth of dreamland to the warmth of Alice in his bed.

“Rough night?” He burred, his voice low and scratchy from disuse. She didn’t answer, and he knew that meant yes. He smelled Noxzema cold cream and minty toothpaste.

Alice’s father drank, and her mom hid from the drinking by shaking too many pills out into her trembling hands. He knew neither of the Johnsons raised a hand to Alice -- if they did, he would have found some way to get her out of there, no matter the cost -- but sometimes the sloppy inebriation was worse. Before she could drive herself to school in a beat-up sedan, Alice would step out of the car -- put together, clean, shiny -- and her mom would wave from the driver’s seat: dirty, unkempt, bloodshot. Alice walked out of English class the day the teacher started talking about Mayella Ewell and her beautiful red geraniums.

She wore leather and rode motorcycles and ran drugs from the Southside to Glendale.

But she wanted a white picket fence and a house on the other side of town. She wanted to read _The Great Gatsby_ and see herself in Daisy, not Myrtle.

If there was one thing FP knew, it was that Alice didn’t know what she wanted.

That was the only excuse that allowed him to forgive her for fucking him in his daddy’s trailer and then showing up to the homecoming dance the next day with Hal Cooper on her arm.

 

\--------------

 

FP hated how she didn’t look like Alice. With her hair twisted up elegantly, no glitter or sin to her makeup, a baby pink dress covering all her best assets, she looked like a cheerleader freshly scrubbed after practice. Hal smiled down at her as if he had won the lottery, as if having Alice Johnson on his arm measured up with scoring a game winning touchdown. He had dressed in that loose lazy way of top-dog jocks, wearing his letterman's jacket with his slacks and dress shirt.

FP glanced down at his own suit, a little oversized, a little rumpled, and wished for his real jacket like a security blanket. He didn’t even see any other Serpents here, just him and Alice. He had only shown up for her. The embarrassed thud of his heart in his ears reminded him he had hoped she had been playing coy, that she would be at the dance waiting for him. He hadn’t really believed she had another date, hadn’t really believed she could want anyone but him.

When she saw him across the room, she smiled and gave a strange little wave. He waved back.

Later in the evening, once Hal had joined a knot of his buddies, their buzzed laughter audible even over the din of the dance itself, Alice made her way to FP. He expected her to look embarrassed. Instead she moved toward him the same way as always, lips curved, eyes sparkling deviously.

“You clean up good,” she said, tossing her arms up around his neck. He looked over toward Hal, oblivious, reliving some glorious 4th quarter. “I didn’t think you’d be at the dance. Not exactly our scene, is it?”

“You’re here.” It sounded every bit as pointed as he intended. He took a step backward.

“Hal asked me. He paid for dinner at some French restaurant in Glendale, bought both dance tickets, and introduced me to his parents.” Alice tossed her head like always but no loose waves could flip. She smoothed her twist self-consciously instead. “Can you believe it? This morning, I was up to my shoulder under the couch digging for change so Dad could get gas on his way to work, and then tonight, I’m ordering a twenty dollar entree and being called ma’am.”

“Hal calls you ma’am? Seems a little kinky for a Cooper.” FP raised an eyebrow.

She chuckled, his sense of humor taking hers in hand and bringing them back together. “He’s not much, is he? But he’s not bad company for one night.”

“I guess not.” The last of his anger evaporated, heated to nothing in the steam of her gaze.

“Dance with me?”

He nodded and took her into his arms, pulled her out to the generic pop ballad leading a roomful of teenagers in slow dance, and though he knew he should mock it, should mock this, he just couldn’t. In his suit, in her dress, they looked like they belonged here in this silly little world. He liked belonging. He breathed and rocked her to the music and promised himself he would never watch her come to a dance with someone else ever again.

“Don’t go out with him again,” he whispered against the soft skin below her ear.

“You know I get asked out every weekend. Hal’s just one option.”

“I know. Don’t go out with anyone else again.”

Alice leaned her head back, met his eyes, and he loved the surprise there, the soft O made by her mouth. She recovered quickly, smirking, but she could not hide what he had seen there.

“I thought we had an arrangement, FP.”

“Let’s change the terms.” He threw the words out before he lost his courage. “Make it official. Be my girl.”

They stared each other down as the music turned from a slow lull to a beat-heavy dance mix.

“I’ve always been your girl,” she said, and neither of them had smirks snarky enough to hide all the vulnerability spilling out between them. His heart kick-flipped in his chest.

“You always will be.”

 

\--------------

 

The months strung out together in long, dizzy stretches. No one ever used the words “dating” or “boyfriend” or “girlfriend,” but FP Jones and Alice Johnson were marked nonetheless. The boys stopped asking her out, though they still watched her strut with baleful, jealous glances toward FP. The girls who buzzed around him like flies around honey, smelling his sweetness under his vinegar, flew away the first time Alice arched a dark eyebrow.

Junior year blurred and buzzed into summer -- that most infamous of summers, the summer before senior year, the summer that changes everything, always, for everyone.

Sticky, oppressive heat, so unusual in Riverdale, settled in like a curse that summer, set everything it touched on fire. The only problem was not everyone could smell smoke right away.

“Thank God. Big, strong arms are here to do some of this lifting for us,” Alice greeted FP when he walked into Southside Wares, the old, not-so-abandoned center of the Serpents’ dark side. He dragged his eyes over her, admiring the soaked wife beater clinging to her body, her hair knotted on top of her head in an oversized scrunchie. He watched a drop of sweat work its way down from her forehead, zigging and zagging over the planes of her face before dropping off to hit the concrete floor.

“It’s about time. I was starting to worry I’d break a nail.” Alice’s best friend, Penny, held out dirty, unpainted fingernails and laughed at her own joke. Side by side, they were twin blonde tornados, and to be near them, FP had to ignore his fear of being swept away. He reached for the crate the girls had been struggling to lift, adding his hands to the labor, and stiffened when he felt its weight.

“What is this?” He straightened up.

“A delivery a friend needs moved up north,” Penny said. “A different client than usual.”

“What, Greendale doesn’t need its pot anymore?” FP said, his tone light but his frown heavy.

“Southside Serpents don’t need to be moving the same product as Teen Beat buyers. Not if we’re going to be taken seriously.” Penny looked over at Alice, met her gaze, waited for a nod of affirmation from her friend. “Not if we’re going to bring real money into our community.”

FP wondered if temperature actually dropped fifteen degrees or if it was just the ice in Penny’s eyes.

“What’s in the crate?” He repeated his question.

“Get him onboard or get him out,” Penny said to Alice. “I’m taking five and having a smoke.”

She walked out of the warehouse with the confidence of a much older woman, a leader. FP didn’t like it. He looked at Alice, standing there with her hands on her hips, looking exasperated.

“What’s in the crate, Alice?”

At the sound of her name in his mouth, she softened, hands falling from her hips, her eyes sparkling the way they did in the light of Casablanca at the drive-in. He stepped to her, tucked his thumb under her chin to tilt her to him.

“Tell me. I won’t judge.”

She half-smiled. “You won’t judge? Do you think I’m deaf? You practically blistered Penny a second ago.”

“Well, that’s Penny Peabody. She’s a bitch.”

“She’s my friend.”

“I’m not sure she’s anybody’s friend.” He warned and kissed the cheek in front of him, tasting sweat and dust. “Tell me.”

He miscalculated. At his gentle touch, she stiffened, and her eyes flared. He should have known her better than to think she could bear to be perceived as weak, that she could bare her own fears and frustrations to even him. He should have ruffled her feathers with a joke, slipped a hand between her legs and teased out a purr. Now the only animal in front of him was a snake.

“They’re guns. That’s where the big money is,” Alice said.

“Jesus Christ.” He stepped away from her. “Guns kill people, woman. Did you forget that little detail?”

She jutted her chin out. “My cut today is going to be a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars in the family bank account.”

“That’s blood money, and you know it.”

“Blood money pays the same bills.” Her voice hardened. “Just a lot faster.”

“Are things so bad?” FP asked. He thought of the Johnsons, the rotating door of jobs and vices and screaming matches.

“And then some,” she confirmed emotionlessly. He knew better than to pity her.

“Then just this once, okay?” FP bored a hole into her with his eyes. “Then we’ll find a better way. You and me.”

“Okay.” He avoided Penny’s triumphant gaze when she came back in and helped them load three ominous crates into the backseat and trunk of Alice’s sedan. When Penny said she’d go with Alice tonight, FP heard his own voice interrupt:

“I’ll go too. Mark it on the map. I’ll drive.”

For the rest of his life, long after he lost her, long after he lost everything, he would remember and regret saying those words.

The driver didn’t get caught.


End file.
